>Who’da thunk it?  Mary Beth Temple, during last night’s Getting Loopy podcast (go here to download from archives) of the Crochet Liberation Front 2009 Flamie Awards ceremony, mentioned that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into blogging.  While accepting the award for Best Crochet Blog, I did not disagree.

Funny how you tend to take stuff for granted until someone shines a spotlight on it.  For nearly two years I have been wandering over here periodically to play and post about whatever was bothering/tantalizing/obsessing me on that particular day.  I was never a diary or journal keeper. The mere idea of writing a permanent record of my feelings and opinions was scary new.

The most horrifying aspect of blogging lies in its very nature.  I come from a background of traditional radio broadcasting where your work, including every little stupid flub, although glaringly public, was a passing parade.  The moment a syllable passed my lips it was sent out on the airwaves, then done and gone in an instant (unless someone like the station’s program director was recording my airshift, YIKES!).  In the disc jockey parlance of the day, flaming meant talking on and on and on, seemingly without internal editing.  But for all my flaming, I never had to hear and be tortured by my work ever again, and neither did anyone else.

Blogging and podcasting are forever.  Anything set free on the internet lives on.  Anything you write or say can only be intensified; vibrations that transcend time and space and could conceivably come back to bite you in the butt years later.  This truly frightens me.

But from the inaugural post on 17 May 2008, and over the course of dozens of deeply personal essays, silly tirades, crochet design backstories, self-promotional blurbs and several attempts at pattern support, I learned to relax and just do it. Hey, this blogging stuff is fun!

Now, imagine my mortification at lucking into this Flamie award, equivalent to having a 1.21 gigawatt beam focused here.

I will get over it.  Yes, I will. 🙂 Thank you, CLF and Fearless Leader (Laurie Wheeler) and to all for your vote of confidence.